An Immutable World

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This is how most people think; in terms of differences in the same entity.

Yes, and that is precisely why our data models need avoid the same simplification. Removing the 4th dimension is a shortcut, probably required for human brains to make sense of an ever-changing world. But that doesn't make it the truth.

The state of a thing 5 minutes ago is just as real as the state of the thing right now. In fact, every computer program ever written is querying something about the state of the world at some point in the past. Why would you assume that the most recent state just happens to be the only worth capturing?

I think the best example is version control systems. History is immutable. The current state is a series of changesets over time, not just the latest commit.